Leveraging Microsoft Online Subscriptions on-premises

I know that sound like a weird title right? How can you leverage Microsoft Online Subscriptions on-premises? After all Office 365 is in the cloud? What is not obvious is that a number of the subscriptions actually do grant you usage rights that are for on-premises use cases!

The key document to refer to is the Microsoft Product Terms. These are updated monthly but are a great source to see what you can and can’t do with different pieces of software including Online Subscriptions.

The focus of this blog post is the table in an appendix called ‘CAL/ML Equivalent Licenses’

CAL/ML Equivalent Licenses

Office 365 Enterprise Subscriptions

Office 365 E1 (excluding Education and Not for Profit) gives you base CALs for Exchange, SharePoint and Skype for Business

Office 365 E3, E4 and E5 give you the enterprise CALs for Exchange SharePoint and Skype for Business (the Skype plus CAL is only given to E4/E5)

These CALs can be used for both Cloud and on-premises services, where the server software is appropriately licensed, and can be used for downgraded versions too

Enterprise Mobility and Security Subscriptions

Again, these CALs can be used for both Cloud and on-premises services, where the server software is appropriately licensed, and can be used for downgraded versions too

Secure Productive Enterprise Subscriptions

Secure Productive Enterprise is a rollup suite of Office 365 Enterprise, EMS and Windows 10 Enterprise purchased under a single SKU and a heavily discounted price (from £28/month). SPE E3 and E5 gives you enterprise CALs for Exchange SharePoint and Skype for Business (the Skype plus CAL is only given to E5) as well as Enterprise CALs including Microsoft Identity Manager (MIM) for Windows Server 2016, Advanced Threat Analytics and System Center Configuration Manager 2016

SPE when bought through an EA agreement also includes the rights to install as many on-premises servers of Exchange, SharePoint and Skype for Business

Again, these CALs can be used for both Cloud and on-premises services, where the server software is appropriately licensed, and can be used for downgraded versions too

So if you are an organization who is in the cloud or who is moving to the cloud there are some potential savings to be made as you may well be double paying at the moment (or inadvertently planning to double pay) No sense in paying twice for the same thing, right?

Twan is a senior consultant with over 20 years of experience. He has a wide range of skills including Messaging, Active Directory, SQL, Networking and Firewalls. Twan loves to write scripts and get deep and dirty into debugging code, in order to understand and resolve the most complex of problems.

Nero Blanco IT Limited is a company initially formed by highly skilled and experienced independent contractors who saw a problem with how large technology migration and consolidation programs were undertaken.